Audible isn't the only one interested in the niche market of the visually impaired reader. If you aren't feeling too lazy, your blog can bag some of the online market, too. Technology is able to read your blogs out loud to the visually impaired. To be read, your articles must be found first. That's where the ugly word work comes into play.
The expression 'visually impaired' covers a huge range of eye and sight deficiencies. People afflicted with such impairments can rely on technology to get some help reading. A machine reads what it detects. We are coming full circle to proper spelling and the proper use of the apostrophe. And you thought I was just being old fashioned when I put up those articles.
While being able to write proper English helps visually impaired readers to enjoy your work, first they have to be able to find it. As my writing doesn't warrant first page in Google Search Ranking, I have to draw them in via social media. Once they have found my work and are enjoying it, the search term stutenzee will bring my stuff up on page one of any search engine.
When using social media with the aim to be read and understood by all, you will have to stick to proper spelling and the proper use of apostrophes in your posts as well. Bad jokes and puns are obviously an exception. How else should you make fun of texts using only one of the terms they're, their, and there. But otherwise you are constricted o the straight and narrow, even if you are gay.
Social media portals like Twitter give you an added problem: The hashtag. #thishashtagsoundslikecrap. A machine will read it as one word; unlike you, it doesn't need to catch some breath at any point. No one will understand a word of the mess coming out of the speaker.
#THISISNOTTHEWAYTOGO. Apart from the principle that shouting is unfriendly, attention seeking, and counterproductive, this hashtag is a proper nightmare. For the machine detecting it, it's an acronym and will be read out as such. The result is the same as above. A total hash (excuse the pun) will hit the ear of the recipient.
To make your hashtag machine friendly (you never thought the day would come where people ask you to be friendly to a machine; welcome to the bright new world) you have to use upper and lower case letters to steer the machine's detection and sounding system to give an understandable reading. #ThisHashtagCanBeReadByAMachine. Each new word starts with an upper case letter, even the 'A' has to be in uppercase, because otherwise it gets thrown in with by to form bya.
You might get away with being sloppy in the example I set above. What if you want to convey something more confusing? #HelpFindAriASinger #HelpFindAriaSinger. The first is looking for help to find any kind of singer for friend Ari. The second is looking for a singer who can sing an aria for whatever purpose. If Ari likes German Schlager, then the second option leaves much to be desired. As you see, spelling is important in writing texts and hashtags.
Further reading
Writing for a Niche Market
Jane Austen and Spelling
Writing Pet Hates
No comments:
Post a Comment